This is not the country I grew up in. This is not what my grandfathers fought for in WW2, this is not what my great uncles and cousins fought for in the civil war, and not what my family fought for in the revolutionary war.

They fought for a place where their progeny, namely my parents, myself and my sisters, and our future offspring, would have the freedom to be educated on equal grounds with all of our fellow US citizens, and we would have the freedom from the tyrrany of power that is concentrated in the hands of people that are not elected by its citizens, and are not accountable to its citizens.

A great-cousin of mine once debated for states rights, which at that time included deciding on whether slavery should be legal or not. In effect he put forth a pro-slavery argument. He won his Senate seat, but a few years later, when his opponent became President, and declared war on the Confederacy, he voted for the war, and was in full support of ending slavery. It is the freedom to change what is not working to what is right that also makes this a great country.

When you look at the world no one can deny that things are not fair. 1% of the worlds population controls 95% of the worlds wealth.It doesnt matter how it happened. Or even why it happened. The mere fact that millions of people live in abject poverty says something about the rest of us who dont.

It used to be that the USA was a Nation of givers and helpers. We championed the underdogs and encouraged others to reach for freedom. The American dream was to come here poor and make something out of your self. To rise from nothing and become sucessful, and to bring others along with us on the way up.

Something has happened over the last one hundred years and changed all of that. We seem to have become a Nation of "I have mine and I will take your too".

How do we fix it? How do we find our way back? I dont know. But I sincererly beleive it starts with a reawakening of our moral and spiritual roots. We kicked God out of our schools. Out of our government. Out of our public speaking places. We have no moral compass. No sense of right and wrong, black and white. Its all about being grey and politicaly correct, and imoral behavour is perfectly acceptable as long as you dont get caught.

You two pretty much summed it up nicely and seem to get the big picture that many are failing to see. Yes our economy is in shambles and this is/will cause pain for the vast majority of Americans. However, what is equally, if not more, important is that we are losing what makes America, America. We are losing our fundamental rights and freedoms all in the name of the government "helping" us. I'm incredibly worried about our economy, but we need to realize the bigger picture here and see that we may be losing more than just our economic superiority and might. We may be losing America in general. We've got to turn this crap around, it just that I have no idea how...

Hi guys -- thanks for the comments. Yeah, I'm not sure what happened to the spirit of self reliance and helping others in our communities who needed help, and being proud of doing things through honesty, merit and hard work. (I guess that's why I was moved to write an article about greed yesterday for Fool.com.) If everybody's just out for themselves, taking whatever they can get however they can get it (and take from everybody else), yeah, we're going down a bad road. And yeah, then demanding the government help us when we're in trouble... and figuring well why not get into trouble, somebody will always bail us out... Yeah the precedents are disturbing and reading The Road to Serfdom recently made me even more jumpy. I take consolation that there are people who are also disturbed about these things too, though. Hopefully the tides can be turned and I'm glad Ron Paul is around saying what a lot of people need to hear.